Like most people who listen to music I have a
Last.fm page which busily
"scrobbles" all of my listening habits. It's not that I'm particularly
interested in giving CBS (the parent company of Last.fm) my listening
habits; it's just easy to send them along via my Squeezebox, and it
paints an interesting profile of me as someone who loves to listen to
music.

What's really interesting is the artists that show up as my most
listened artists.

I'm a huge Rush fan. I've been a Rush fan ever since high school. Any
time Rush is in town, expect JoDee and I to either be in the audience,
or having an existential crisis over why we can't go.

Rush is the 9th most listened band in my list, after Daft Punk, Risha,
Obituary, Testament, and so on. Heck, even Claude Debussy ranks higher
in total listens than Rush.

So, does this mean that Rush is not my number one band of all time?
Should I instead be putting my efforts into seeing Daft Punk in concert?

Perhaps, but there's something more to that data than just number of
songs played might show you.

I spend most of my working hours listening to music via the Squeezebox.
And my work involves programming, which is usually best done with either
extremely angry music, or with very nondescript, almost sound-track-like
music.

Daft Punk released what I consider to be the penultimate developer
album, namely the Tron:
Legacy
soundtrack.

Chances are I'll probably put this album on at least once a week, if not
more.

Why not listen to Rush? Well, on occasion I do, but Neil Peart is my
favorite drummer of all time, and there's a reason I keep drumsticks
near my desk. (Note to current boss: the sticks in my cubicle are merely
for show. Honest. :) )

But without context, and without knowing where and when I listen to this
music, you might think I was full of it, and Daft Punk and Risha are my
favorite artists. And while that may be true in an office context, I
have far more Rush memorabilia than any of the bands in the top 20
combined. (Sorry, Claude.)

There's an old saying "you can't manage what you can't measure", but you
also can't measure what you can't put into context. My musical tastes
vary depending on location,and I'm sure yours do too. I'm sure you can
come up with examples where context would give you a completely
different answer outside of numerical counting.

(This is why I get cranky when people talk about radio ratings for an
entire market. No wonder Detroit only has one under-served classical
radio station, but 10 decades stations. But that's another rant for
another time.)

What measurements are you taking right now that could be improved by
figuring out the context?